Enhanced Programming

In August 2011, the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI) was announced as a component of New York City’s Young Men’s Initiative, supported by Open Society Foundations and Bloomberg Philanthropies, as a pledge to “transform the lives of New York’s most vulnerable children.” The strategy of ESI has been to invest deeply in a targeted group of schools to identify, implement and codify best practices – then disseminate these successes citywide. The investments build on existing work or jump start new approaches to school operations and organization that have an evidence base for achieving postsecondary outcomes for Black and Latino young men. Schools began their participation by analyzing the state of their efforts at college readiness, taking stock of how their current initiatives and programs impact 9th graders, and how these can be aligned to the challenge of increasing postsecondary success for Black and Latino young men. The ESI Design Challenge is based on evidence that schools require coherent systems for postsecondary planning across three inter-related areas of school operation. See our index for a full list of ESI promising practices.